Design Leader, Software Design

United States Digital Space LLC; Helsinki; Hybrid; EUR 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Lunch benefit

Wellness benefit

Flexible working hours

Collaborative, smart teammates

An the company ring of your own

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC in Helsinki is seeking a Design Leader of Software Design to guide the end‑to‑end experience of our member‑facing mobile and web products. You will lead a multi‑discipline design organization, partnering with Product, Engineering, Data and Brand to raise the bar on craft, impact and collaboration.

You will build and mentor teams, shape a coherent design vision, evolve the design system, and advocate for AI‑enabled workflows that improve speed and personalization.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software/product/interaction design for digital products, including consumer/health tech contexts.
• 3+ years of leadership experience managing UX teams in a product org, with clear expectations across levels.
• Portfolio demonstrating ownership of complex, multi-surface experiences and design thinking at scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a high‑performing design organization.
• Mentor designers through regular 1:1s and career conversations.
• Set and operationalize a compelling design vision for mobile and web experiences.
• Elevate craft through active participation in critiques and design reviews.
• Define and steward the design system to support a scalable product.
• Partner with product and engineering while preserving design authority.
• Build and steward the team through hiring and culture development.
• Champion AI‑enabled design workflows to improve speed, quality and personalization.

Skills

10+ years software design

3+ years leadership

Portfolio of complex multi-surface

Systems thinking

Strong communication

Job description

Our mission at the company is to empower every person to own their inner potential. Our award-winning products help our global community gain a deeper knowledge of their readiness, activity, and sleep quality by using their the company Ring and its connected app. We've helped millions of people understand and improve their health by providing daily insights and practical steps to inspire healthy lifestyles.

Empowering the world starts with living our values and empowering our team. As a quickly growing company focused on helping people live healthier and happier lives, we ensure that our team members have what they need to do their best work — both in and out of the office.

We are looking for a Design Leader of Software Design to lead the end-to-end experience of the company’s software products, with a primary focus on our member-facing mobile and web experiences. This role sits alongside our most senior individual contributors and is expected to operate in high ambiguity, set a clear design vision, and create enduring, company-level impact across multiple product areas.

You will build, lead, and mentor a multi-disciplinary design organization, partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Data, and Brand to deliver coherent, insight-driven experiences across the company’s ecosystem. You are accountable for raising the bar across four core dimensions: Operational Excellence (craft & execution), Impact (strategy & product value), Collaboration (communication & alignment), and Leadership (culture & people). This is a highly collaborative, hands‑on leadership role based in Helsinki with a hybrid work model.

What you will do:

Lead and develop a high‑performing design organization You manage software design teams, overseeing multiple designers and design leads. You create the conditions for excellent work: clear expectations, strong feedback structures, and genuine investment in people’s growth. Your management style builds trust while holding a consistently high bar for design quality.

Mentor and develop designers You invest in the people around you. You support designers at all levels through regular 1:1s, career conversations, and honest, actionable feedback. You help them see around corners, develop their craft, and grow their confidence, not just their output.

Set a compelling, coherent design vision You define what great looks like for the company’s member‑facing experiences across mobile and web and you make that vision concrete and actionable for the team. You bring systems thinking to the full experience: flows, states, transitions, information hierarchy, microcopy, and the moments between interactions that make or break how a product feels.

Elevate craft through active participation You are in the room for the work that matters. You lead critiques and working sessions that meaningfully improve what the team produces, not by overriding, but by modeling stronger thinking, asking sharper questions, and holding the quality line. Your presence raises the bar without taking over.

Define and steward the design system You treat the design system as a lever for coherence and velocity, not overhead. You work with design leads to evolve it as the product scales, ensuring it reflects the company’s visual language and interaction standards across every surface.

Partner with product and engineering without ceding design authority You build strong working relationships with product leadership and collaborate on roadmap priorities but you bring a distinct design perspective to those conversations. You know when to push back on pressures that would compromise the member experience, and you do it with clarity and respect.

Build and steward the team You play an active role in recruiting, hiring, and onboarding designers. You help define what the team needs, and you bring the same rigor to hiring decisions that you bring to design decisions. Over time, you help shape the culture, norms, and practices that make the team exceptional.

Champion AI‑enabled design workflows You lead initiatives to incorporate AI tools, workflows, and new mental models that improve the speed, quality, and personalization of the company’s experiences. You help designers see themselves as creative directors of AI‑assisted output.

Requirements

We would love to have you on our team if you have:

• Extensive experience (typically 10+ years) in software design, product design, or interaction design for digital products, including significant time in consumer or health tech environments.

• Proven leadership experience (3+ years) managing and growing UX teams in a product development organization, including setting clear expectations across different levels.

• A portfolio that demonstrates sustained ownership of complex, multi‑surface experiences with clear evidence of your design thinking, not just team output. We want to understand your role in shaping outcomes, not just artifacts, especially in highly ambiguous or multi‑quarter initiatives.

• Deep fluency across interaction design, information architecture, visual hierarchy, motion, and systems thinking. You’ve shipped polished, coherent consumer software and you understand the difference between good and great at the detail level.

• Track record of improving experience quality in measurable ways through engagement signals, satisfaction scores, qualitative research findings, or reduced friction in core user flows.

• Demonstrated excellence in Operational Excellence (strong craft and execution on complex, multi‑platform products) and Impact (connecting software design work to clear product outcomes).

• Strong evidence of Collaboration and Leadership: building effective cross‑functional relationships, influencing senior stakeholders, and creating healthy, inclusive team cultures.

• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with experience presenting to senior leadership and facilitating complex design decisions.

We love

• Experience working on health, wellness, or other trust‑sensitive products where emotional tone, clarity, and credibility must be carefully calibrated.

• A history of making the teams around you better through mentorship, cultural contribution, and sustained investment in design quality.

• Experience owning or co‑owning a consumer design system and evolving it to serve a scaling product.

• Fluency with high‑fidelity interaction prototyping not just static mocks, but communicating motion, feel, and micro‑interactions at a fidelity that engineering can build from.

• Experience working with user researchers as partners: drawing on their insights to pressure‑test and evolve design direction, without owning the research function yourself.

• Curiosity about AI tools and their effect on design practice with opinions about where human judgment is irreplaceable.

• Experience navigating the intersection of product design and brand, and knowing when and how to hold the line on quality.

What we offer

• Competitive salary

• Lunch benefit

• Wellness benefit

• Flexible working hours

• Collaborative, smart teammates

• An the company ring of your own

• Wellness Time Off

the company is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We celebrate diversity